Whether or not you like his attempt to buy the OC Fair & Event Center, say this for Newport Beach outlet mall developer Steven Craig—he’s doing his part to spur the slow economy. In addition to his $56.5 million high bid for the state-owned Costa Mesa fairgrounds (Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger is under local pressure to stop the sale), Craig says he plans to spend $25 million to expand his Assyrian-style Citadel Outlets mall next to the Santa Ana (I-5) Freeway in Commerce. And he still wants to build a $200 million outlet mall in San Clemente, part of the stalled Marblehead development …
Craig’s partner in the fairgrounds bid, celebrity-connected Newport Beach businessman Dwight Manley, also is busy on other projects. He’s an investor in Goal, a restaurant opening soon in Hollywood, and in “Xtrme City,” a film directed by Paul Schrader of “Taxi Driver” and “Raging Bull” fame. Manley continues to work on 150,000 square feet of space in his hometown of Brea, and he helped Jim Jannard negotiate Lake Forest-based Red Digital Cinema Camera’s recent purchase of the historic DesiLu studio building on Hollywood’s Cahuenga Boulevard …
The fringe benefits at Freedom Communications were never like this: Shady Canyon’s Scott Flanders, who left the parent of the Orange County Register in June to run Playboy Enterprises, was inviting friends to the oceanfront Sagamore Hotel in Miami last week to party with celebs, athletes, musicians and a “bevy” of Playmates and bunnies. The Playboy bash was a run-up to the Super Bowl …
KOCE-TV reporter and “Inside OC” producer David Nazar has won a fourth Golden Mike (and a hug from award presenter and “Lassie’s mom” June Lockhart), for his report on controversial FBI-mosque informant Craig Monteilh …
He’s 50: Hispanic-business networker Ruben Alvarez of Stay Connected OC …
Three hundred people packed University Synagogue in Irvine to remember trailblazing OC Supe Harriett Wieder, but Gus Owen, in from Texas to pay his respects, quipped, “Harriett is looking down to see who didn’t show up!” …
Yes, that Gus Owen, the developer and politico who with his wife, homebuilder Kathryn Thompson, were a top OC power couple in the ’80s and ’90s before vanishing from the local scene. They caused a stir in 1992 by joining with Wieder and a few other prominent local Republicans to endorse Democratic presidential challenger Bill Clinton; a grateful Clinton put Owen on the Interstate Commerce Commission. Owen says he and Thompson settled in Dallas, close to her hometown of Gainesville and his home state of Oklahoma, largely because, “We wanted to get out of the social and political arenas.” Owen says Thompson does some consulting and he still visits OC to check his apartment holdings. Owen looks good at 76. By the Insider’s reckoning the glamorous Thompson will hit a milestone birthday this year but Owen only says, “That’s her business.”
